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Heading into critical midterms, Democrats turn over new leaf on marijuana

WASHINGTON—Benjamin Thomas Wolf, an obscure Democrat running for Congress in Illinois, released a campaign ad in which he was pictured smoking marijuana.

He got a bunch of attention. Then he was exposed for inventing some of his biography. Local media wrote stories about the downfall of the “cannabis candidate.”

Gary Wegman, a dentist and farmer running for Congress in Pennsylvania, acknowledged his support for marijuana legalization could turn off older and religious voters. But he said the obvious harms of prohibition made it the only position he could take. (Gary Wegman)

This year, though, Illinois voters had lots of cannabis candidates to choose from. And most of them were nowhere near the political fringe.

All eight Democrats running to be attorney general, the state’s top law enforcement officer, also endorsed marijuana legalization. So did the three top Democratic candidates for governor. One of them, state Sen. Daniel Biss, had signs that called him “CannaBiss” — the type of branding that would have been done by his opponents, not his own campaign, in decades past.

Heading into the critical midterm elections in November, Democratic congressional candidates around the country are embracing marijuana legalization in unprecedented numbers. The shift hasn’t only occurred in liberal-leaning states like Illinois. The pro-legalization candidates include Beto O’Rourke, a House member mounting a credible Senate challenge to Ted Cruz in conservative Texas.

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Three years after Justin Trudeau successfully campaigned on legalization in Canada, top prospective presidential candidates are also jumping on board. When Sen. Bernie Sanders endorsed legalization during his 2016 campaign, he was the first prominent candidate for a major U.S. party to do so. This year, he has already been joined by senators and possible candidates Cory Booker, Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand.

The Democrats’ shift comes during a broader leftward leap that has seen mainstream party figures take a variety of positions that would have been considered untouchable as recently as Barack Obama’s first campaign, including support for single-payer health care.

But marijuana legalization may no longer be fairly called a left-wing stance. A record 61 per cent of Americans support it, a Pew Research poll found last year, double the percentage from 2000.

“I think there is a recognition from federal lawmakers that advocating in favour of legalizing marijuana is a position that is more popular than they themselves are,” said Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).

Nine states and Washington, D.C., now allow recreational marijuana; 29 states allow marijuana for medical purposes. But marijuana remains prohibited by the federal government, which continues to classify it as a “Schedule 1” drug, the same category as heroin. And Attorney General Jeff Sessions is an anti-marijuana hardliner.

Sessions has a constituency: a majority of Republican voters remain opposed to legalization. But that majority is shrinking. Forty-three per cent of Republicans backed legalization in the Pew poll.

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There are signs of movement among the Republican elite as well. Former House Speaker John Boehner, a one-time opponent of legalization, just joined the board of a marijuana company. When Sessions rescinded the Obama-era policy of not interfering in states that have legalized marijuana, Republican Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner threw a strategic fit until President Donald Trump promised him there would not be a crackdown.

The recent shift among federal lawmakers, Armentano said, comes only because individual voters at the state level have “essentially forced their hand.”

The opioid epidemic, he said, has pushed some voters to urge their representatives to make it easier to access a drug that can be used in place of some highly addictive pain pills. And voters have approved marijuana reform in direct votes in a diverse array of conservative and liberal states.

“The fact is, if you put the issue of marijuana laws on the ballot and you allow the electorate to decide that issue, they virtually always decide in favour of liberalizing the marijuana laws,” Armentano said.

Sanders’s pollster, Ben Tulchin, said the senator’s marijuana stance helped just “a little” in 2016, less than his authenticity and his sharp criticism of the economic and political systems. Tulchin said that marijuana-related ballot measures have had only a “marginal, if any, impact on turnout among young voters.” But he said Democrats are “clearly on the right side of the trend.”

Gary Wegman, a Democratic dentist and farmer running for Congress in Pennsylvania’s 9th District, said there is a general-election risk to his pro-legalization position: while Democrats and young people in his district are supportive, older and religious people are less so.

But he said the obvious harms of prohibition — incarceration costs, a disproportionate impact on people of colour, an inability to safeguard product quality — made legalization the only position he could take. And he said he doubted he would get much flak for it.

“I think it’s very minor on the minds of my constituents,” he said. “I think they’re much more concerned about health care, agriculture and jobs.” He paused. “But the marijuana issue does dovetail into agriculture. Because we could get good ag jobs.”

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